Morphological and Molecular Diversity in Durum Wheat (Triticum DurumDesf.) Landraces of North Shewa
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Date
1999-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Morphological and molecular diversity study and the associated ethnobotanical
profile of durum wheat landraces (farmers' varieties) of North Shewa have been
undertaken in this study. Morphological diversity stndy on thirteen durnm wheat
popnlations (381 genotypes) ,collected earlier by the Biodiversity Conservation and
Research Institute from five awrajas and ten weredas of North Shewa region, was
conducted using six heritable qualitative traits. The diversity was estimated using
Shannon Weaver diversity index (H'). H' was estimated for each population,
wereda, awraja and altitudinal class and the entire collection. On population basis
H' is lowest at Basona Warena wereda (0.25 ± 0.08) and highest at Kimbibit Wereda
(0.65 ± 0.16). On awraja basis H' ranged from (0.50 ± 0.03) in Gam Midir to (0.73 ±
0.10) in Selale. On altitudinal basis, the third altitudinal class (2401-2600 m.a.s.l.) sc
ored the highest H' (0.78). The diversity index for the study area is very high (0.79 ±
0.08). On character basis seed color showed the highest H' (0.97). Only glume
pubescence was conspicuously unique to specific awmja and altitudinal class.
A high diversity of the crop is also observed from the ethnobotany study. A total of
twenty-five different farmers' varieties having different vernacular names were
recorded. The environmental, social (cultural) and economic factors were identified
by the farmer as factors for maintaining the existing diversity. The different
varieties have important merits in agronomy, disease resistance, traditional use
values and so on. Farmers have their own folk taxonomy system for identifying and
classifying their varieties.
The Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) molecular technique with a
gluten-coding single primer system with the following sequence,
{ 5'- ATG AAG ACC TTC CTC GTC TT- 3'}
{ 5'-AAC GCC GAA TGG CAC ACT A- 3' }
showed good demonstration of the inter-population diversity of the thirteen
populations. Except three populations, all the rest showed diffel'ent banding
patterns with different base pair fmgments for the same primer used. Generally the
whole study confirmed the existence of strikingly high diversity of durum wheat in
the study area and underlines the role of the indigenous knowledge of farmers for
the existing diversity.
Key words: Wheat, Triticum dUrlIm, landraces (fanners' varieties), diversity index (H')
Morphological traits, ethnobotany, RAPD.
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Keywords
Wheat, Triticum dUrlIm, landraces (fanners varieties), diversity index (H'), Morphological traits, ethnobotany, RAPD